


This Simple Life

by angel_gidget



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe, Community: comment_fic, Drama, Family, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Police
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-14
Updated: 2011-05-14
Packaged: 2017-10-19 09:21:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/199311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_gidget/pseuds/angel_gidget
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p> Comment_fic for the prompt "Somehow Gordon ends up fostering/adopting Jason Todd."</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Simple Life

_**Fic [DCU]: This Simple Life**_  
 **Title:** This Simple Life  
 **Fandom:** DCU  
 **Rating:** PG-13  
 **Word Count:** 3947  
 **Disclaimer:** Not mine.  
 **Summary:**  comment_fic for the prompt "Somehow Gordon ends up fostering/adopting Jason Todd."

He's a traditional sort of man, so at first (of course) the boy bucks him on every point. Cigarettes stowed away in the bathroom. Talking back to him in public, girls at odd hours, antiseptic swapped for alcohol of a different kind.

But one night, after the boy's been gone exactly 23 hours (he'd already picked up the phone to start the search) and returns at four A.M the following morning, Jim's worry overflows, showing in his exhaustion and relief. There is a grinning green-haired psycho on the streets, and Jason should know better, but still... He hugs the kid. Tightly. Then gruffly tells him to go to bed. But it's then that Jason _gets_ it. The concern. The care. And just in case he didn't, the commissioner takes the following day off, to spend time with his _family_.

Jim watches as Babs wrestles with Jason about the jungle-gym as if they were five years younger than the teenagers they are. Jason pauses for a moment to gauge the strange feeling-- the joy without illicitness.

It's a fight at school. Jay's got a split lip and a black eye, but Gordon knows without looking, that the other kid's gotta look a damn sight worse. He half-expects Jason to look at him defiantly, still expecting assumptions and censure, but it warms him to see that there's no such look there. Jason knows him better now. It's not Jason's fault. At least not entirely. They both know it.

"I don't think he'll bother me for the rest of the semester." ("So I won't get in trouble and bother you," he doesn't say.)

"You won't see him next semester. I got a raise. Enough to send you to St. Anna's with Barbara." The kid takes it as some kind of slight. He's still learning.

"No. I'm not scared. I can handle jerks like him."

Jim tries to say it gently, so the boy will understand:

"Jay, you don't _have_ to."

When Jason finishes his first day at his new school, he works on processing the odd feelings. The kids here are ridiculously sheltered, and geeky, and say some of the stupidest things... but none of them, not a single one, has tried to hurt him today. When he gets home, "Dad" (He's trying it out in his head, even if he won't be ready to say it for a while.) aks him if the school's okay. He thinks about it for all of half a second and shrugs. "They're a bunch of wimps, but yeah... I guess."

He knows it's a bad idea to bring Jay to the dinner shindig. All the rich types just make him angry and, what's even more dangerous, he's likely to grow bored. But he's curious, and even Gordon gets tired of saying "no" sometimes. He knows Jason will get into trouble... he just doesn't expect him to get in trouble right along with Dick Grayson. There are ten very important guests covered in punch and one very expensive chandelier scattered in pieces on the floor. The boys aren't as sorry as they are trying to appear (though _his_ honestly isn't trying very hard). Yet Bruce can't quite hide the twitch forming at his lip. Jim only succeeds because of the mustache.

The man tries very, very hard not to be afraid when Jason tells him he wants to enter the force. It's possible. The kids done... well, lots of things, but very little of it's _on record_. And it's Gotham. So, it's possible. And Jason, who can be rough and hard, but hates seeing wrong done to good people, would make a good cop. He's come so far... and in a way, that's exactly the problem. Gordon wants to shake him, tell him he can be anything... but that's not exactly true. Jason can never be a scientist or a doctor or a simple man doing a simple nine-to-five. It's not Jason, and never will be. So instead, Jim pours them both a beer, wraps his arm around Jay's shoulders, and begins preparing him for the family business.

When Jason Todd-Gordon is twenty-two years old, and discharged from the crime scene and the questioning, he goes home. Not to his new apartment with its post-teenage mess, but to his father's house. He still hears that madman endlessly giggling with crow-bar in hand, right up until the sound of the gunshot that makes him go silent. He remembers the look on the Batman's face, what he could see under the curve of the cowl, such a _weird_ combination of relieved and lost. It feels as if the world has shifted, but the story is a simple one. A criminal resisted arrest. An officer shot him dead. The fact that the officer had lived in five months of mental hell trailing the murderer, dredging up all the anger, paranoia and despair of his childhood right up until the point when he pulled the trigger and the fact that he did this one simple thing that Gotham's greatest vigilante _cannot do_.... is irrelevant.

He goes to his father's house. And the man there, older now, but still strong and still just, wraps an arm around him and looks him in the eye...

... and reassures him he's done well.

 _f.i.n._   


[[*](http://community.livejournal.com/comment_fic/228021.html?thread=47477173#t47477173)]


End file.
